There is disclosed in co-pending U.S. Pat. No. 6,865,169 titled “CELLULAR WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS SYSTEM USING SPREAD SPECTRUM AND INTERNET PROTOCOL”, application Ser. No. 09/432,824, filed Nov. 2, 1999, assigned to the present Applicant, and published in equivalent form as European patent publication EP1098539, a cellular wireless Internet access system which is specifically designed to meet the special and particular requirements of a selected frequency band which has a large amount of available spectrum. As part of the U.S. government requirements for operation in such a system, it must be capable of operating in more than one band or frequency range. For high speed transfer of digital data, of course, the received radio transmission must be digitized. In the above co-pending application, the user has a radio receiving antenna attached to user equipment (UE) which includes conversion means for receiving the wireless radio signal and ultimately transmitting the digital data to the user's personal computer (PC). In addition, the overall wireless system includes a base radio receiving station (‘Node B’) which again digitizes the radio signal to convey it to a radio network controller (RNC).
In a spread spectrum system as described above, information signal bits are transmitted in a sequence of chips at a particular chip rate dependent upon the characteristics of the particular frequency band in which the system is operating. Thus, the design of the system must accommodate varying chip rates. Moreover, as in the system described above, hundreds of thousands or millions of replications of at least the user equipment (UE) is required. Thus, the design of a receiver, which includes a detector, must be carefully chosen. In other words, there should be low cost and at the same time effective operation.